Nintendo: We Love Independent Developers

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“We’ve taken steps on the development side to make our system independent-friendly.”

By Andrew Goldfarb

Nintendo is committed to facilitating independent development on Wii U. In an interview earlier this week following the announcement of 2DS, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime explained that helping independent development grow is a big priority for Nintendo.

“The independent developer, especially those developers who have experience, who’ve shown real capabilities, we love those independent developers,” Fils-Aime told IGN. “And what we’re doing is creating even more of an infrastructure for a brand-new independent developer, someone who’s never created content before, to be effective on our platform. So it’s an area that we’re spending a lot more time and a lot more energy to create the infrastructure to help these developers publish their content and be effective. It’s something that we have had to learn how to do. Because our systems aren’t straightforward for a developer who hasn’t had a lot of experience.”

A huge part of helping independent development thrive on Wii U is providing the necessary resources, Fils-Aime explained.

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We’re spending a lot more time and a lot more energy to create the infrastructure to help these developers publish their content and be effective.

“First, you want the tools to be able to create your content and bring it onto the system,” he said. “That’s why we’ve announced the relationship with Unity. That’s why we’ve created the Nintendo Web Framework. Again, we’ve taken steps on the development side to make our system independent-friendly. Second thing we’ve done is we’ve created the merchandising capabilities, right? So when you’re on the eShop, how we promote and merchandise content."

"You’ll see that we’re merchandising indies’ content right alongside our content," he continued. "There’s no separate area. There’s no challenge of discovery to find this content. That’s what the independent developers really love, because they know that consumers are going to the eShop looking for. If there’s a value program for some Virtual Console content, or if we’ve re-released a new piece of content, and right alongside that is going to be indies’ content. They love that.”